The Death Of Joliet Road

January 26, 2001

Three years ago, workers for the Illinois Department of Transportation spotted strange cracks in one stretch of Joliet Road, a major spoke through Chicago's southwestern suburbs. For reasons that are (or aren't) a mystery, the cracks grew into dangerous dips and buckles. By May of 1998, IDOT had no choice but to close that mile-long stretch and push almost 20,000 drivers a day onto side streets that remain choked by all the traffic.

From such humble beginnings has sprung perhaps the worst case of road rage in the Chicago area, with citizens and politicians clamoring for IDOT to find a fix. The case is also intriguing, because it involves an unusual question: What should the state do if one of its important thoroughfares is so badly damaged--possibly by a private company--that it may be beyond repair?

The closed roadway especially affects residents of McCook, Hodgkins and Countryside. It sits atop a narrow, pillar-like ridge that divides a deep, century-old limestone quarry. IDOT contends that the quarry's owner, Vulcan Materials Co., caused the damage by mining too close to the ridge. Vulcan blames Mother Nature: The company says the rock cracks and slippages that ultimately ruined the roadway extend 400 feet down, much farther than Vulcan has ever mined.

U.S. Rep. William Lipinski has worked hard to get Joliet Road rebuilt. He, state Sen. Christine Radogno, state Rep. Eileen Lyons and state Rep. Anne Zickus have pushed IDOT to find a fair and fast solution.

IDOT, too, has worked hard, but so far the perfect solution has proved elusive. The problem with rebuilding the existing roadway is that the rock on which it sits continues to shift slightly. IDOT has four construction options that would address this worrisome shift to varying degrees; the most ambitious plan would cost $45 million, plus land and engineering costs.

There may be a better solution. Within weeks, IDOT will unveil an option that would leave the stretch of Joliet Road closed, but greatly improve the local route that bypasses it. The plan may include more lanes, better signals--and a buffer zone to keep future mining explosions from wrecking the newly improved roads.

Here's where Gov. George Ryan can be a hero. If the bypass plan looks like the best combination of costs and benefits, Ryan should try to broker a deal in which the Joliet Road stretch would stay closed but Vulcan would pay to upgrade the streets around its quarry. That would be a less than perfect fix for the driving public; the detour adds a half-mile to motorists' travel. But a rapidly settled deal would avoid years of inaction while IDOT battles in court to prove Vulcan's liability.

What's urgent now is to get beyond the anger and put some sort of fix in motion. Lipinski is right when he says that too many citizens have been inconvenienced for three years by a dilemma not of their making.